Tunisia lifts nationwide nighttime curfew

Tunisia said on Thursday it is lifting a nationwide nighttime curfew imposed last month after the worst social unrest witnessed in the country since its 2011 revolution.

“In light of the improvement in the security situation, it was decided that from Thursday… the curfew on all Tunisian territory will be lifted,” the interior ministry said in a statement.

The curfew was imposed after protests that started in the central town of Kasserine, where an unemployed man was electrocuted during a January 16 demonstration over the lack of economic prospects in the region.

The unrest — the worst since the uprising five years ago that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — spread to several other towns and to Tunis where shops were burned and looted in one suburb in the night of January 21.

The authorities announced the curfew the next day, and protests ebbed after continuing for a while in Kasserine and the nearby town of Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the 2011 revolution.